On April 21, 2026, Duke Kunshan University hosted a Thematic Short Film Screening about Memory, Identity & Resistance.
The event began with an informal social session. This aimed to place participants in a shared, realistic environment before the screening began. Professor Robin Rodd prepared mocktails for the attendees. The Southeast Asian Student Club provided Lahpet Thoke (Myanmar tealeaf salad). This initial session encouraged casual conversations and sensory experiences. It highlighted everyday cultural practices and created an atmosphere focused on local contexts and actual life experiences.
Subsequently, six short films from China, Myanmar, Morocco, and Thailand were screened. The program aimed to unfold through different regimes of memory. It ranged from state-centered narratives to intimate recollections, and from material landscapes to sensory and emotional traces. At the same time, it highlighted the diversity of cinematic forms.
The first two films from China introduced a productive tension between opposing ideologies. One emphasized personal experiences, intimate relationships, and the negotiation of identity in daily life. The other dealt more directly with state narratives and collective memory. After the screening, participants engaged in an in-depth discussion. They explored the coexistence and conflict between collectivist traditions and the increasingly prominent individualism and neo-liberalism in contemporary Chinese society. The discussion expanded further to cover the intersection of family structures, gender roles, and forms of patriotism. This highlighted the operational modes of ideologies.
After a short break, the program featured A Metamorphosis (2025) directed by Lin Htet Aung. This film previously won the Tiger Short Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film received wide attention for its experimental narrative strategies and its exploration of recent political turmoil in Myanmar. It did not express this by directly presenting political violence. Instead, it used metaphors, bodily transformations, and fragmented temporality. These elements suggested the difficulty of expressing actual life experiences under unstable and oppressive conditions. After the screening, director Lin Htet Aung and Professor Kaley Clements held a Q&A session. Their discussion connected the film’s formal abstraction to personal experiences and the broader historical trajectory of Myanmar. They emphasized how cinematic forms can serve as a response to censorship, trauma, and the limits of direct expression. The audience asked questions about the film’s creative process, symbolic methods, and its relationship with political realities. This sparked a series of in-depth exchanges about the role of experimental films in presenting controversial histories.
The final part of the program expanded the geographical and conceptual scope through films from Morocco and Thailand. The Moroccan work examined a mining community using a hybrid form that combined documentary elements with staged performances. Through this, it explored how collective memory is constructed, reenacted, and mediated. It highlighted the cohesion and vulnerability of community life. This was especially true in a context shaped by labor, marginalization, and post-colonial economic structures.
The event finally concluded with a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film no longer focused on explicit social or political conflicts. Instead, it shifted the issues of memory and identity to a more ambiguous and sensory level. Here, memory was no longer presented as narrative or representation. It appeared more as atmosphere, perception, and the remnants of time. This concluding work did not resolve the tensions explored throughout the program. Rather, it suspended them. It provided a more open reflection on how personal and collective histories continue to exist beyond language and formal expression.
Overall, these six films demonstrated a wide range of cinematic expression. The program not only explored issues of memory, identity, and resistance. It also highlighted how cinema itself, as a heterogeneous medium, can intervene in the construction, experience, and reimagining of history.
The event was hosted by the Fascism and Everyday Life Initiative. It was part of the initiative’s 2025-2026 annual screening series. This screening series ultimately aimed to highlight the political significance of the medium. It also showed how cinema continues to interact with social reality through its formal diversity. The daily operations of the initiative and this event were sponsored by the Humanity Research Center. This sponsorship covered the travel expenses of the attendees, event promotion costs, and other expenses.
